The Free Speech Movement sprang back to life in Berkeley on Thursday with fresh blasts of unfettered verbal assaults on both major candidates for president amid a political carnival of panels, drama and commemorative T- shirts.

The faces of graying FSM veterans glowed under the spotlight of the movement's 40th anniversary commemoration as they recounted how they had created and steered a three-month protest that is renowned today for generating waves of student activism across America.

"You cannot tell them apart, except that one is smaller and slightly stupider," Cockburn said. "When it comes to substance, they are exactly the same."

As he spoke, writer Jo Freeman, a veteran of the FSM and author of "At Berkeley in the '60s," told 31 people packed in a mid-campus conference room about how the Communist bugbear shaped UC officials' perception of the FSM.

UC officials accused the movement of being Communist-influenced. The immediate conflict then was the FSM's battle against a campus ban on political advocacy, which in 1964 often meant civil rights organizing.

The FSM became famous for its acts of civil disobedience, including a 32- hour capture on Oct. 1, 1964 of a police car on Sproul Plaza that was attempting to take away civil rights organizer Jack Weinberg and a Dec. 2 occupation of Sproul Hall that led to the biggest mass arrest of students in U. S. history.

Thursday's commemoration events, however, brought to light lesser known and perhaps previously unknown elements of that intense three-month period when the university was virtually turned upside down.

In the days before e-mail, cell phones and copying machines, how did the FSM leaders mobilize thousands of students?

"Somebody came up with this great idea -- let's call the student body," John Sutake, a member of the FSM executive committee, told an audience of about 50 people scattered in a large auditorium at International House.

"We had two phones in the room. There were 30,000 students. Do the math." So, they contacted about 500 volunteers and asked each of them to call about 30 or 60 students each from their own phones, said Sutake, now a UC gardener.

"We wanted them to be part of our movement, and if they had objections to our tactics, or if they had suggestions, we wanted to hear about them ..." Sutake said. "We gave the courtesy of calling them up and saying, 'Hey, come to the rally and we'll let you speak whichever side you're on."

Such accessibility and two-way communication with the mass of students, combined with group leadership, kept the movement going strong even after 95 percent of the leadership and 85 percent of the core followers were locked up after the Sproul Hall occupation, said Kathleen Piper, another executive committee member who is now an artist.

"We still put a picket line around every major building on campus," she said at a panel of movement leaders speaking on "The Nuts and Bolts of the FSM. "

Volunteers worked sometimes 18 to 20 hours a day, running the mimeograph machine or doing other tasks to get the daily leaflets printed and distributed, said Richard Schmorleitz, who was press spokesman for the movement.

"We ran off millions and millions of sheets of paper," said Piper, wearing an FSM T-shirt.

Art students made picket signs, and graphic artist David Goines rode around campus on his moped gathering donation cans.

Also important was the passion of the speakers, including the best-known leader of the movement, the late Mario Savio, who fired up the students with his eloquence, including an early speech he gave from the top of the police car surrounded by thousands of students in Sproul Plaza.

Less well-known is what came next after Savio stepped down.

"Mario got off the car," recalled Marilyn Noble, a retired school teacher. "He was in his socks. I came up to him and I said, 'Who does your laundry? ... You're not doing it anymore. You've become a public figure. Where do you live?"

As a result, Noble moved into a College Avenue apartment and ran what became known as FSM Central, where a rotating group of about 15 students slept on the floor in addition to six others living in a space originally meant for three.

Savio slept in an alcove separated by a sheet, she said. And when the front door became stuck shut, the window on his alcove served as the entrance to the headquarters.

Free speech week

The 40th anniversary commemoration of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley runs through Sunday. A full schedule is available at www.fsm-a.org/#conflict.